1. Field
Embodiments relate to geographical information systems (GIS), and particularly to streaming of GIS data.
2. Background
A geographical information system (GIS) can be used to store, analyze, and display geographical information and map data. Although GIS applications are generally implemented on standalone or desktop systems, they are also being implemented on mobile devices in the form of mobile GIS applications.
Usability of such GIS applications depends on rendering and displaying content quickly and smoothly. Mobile devices have limited network, memory, and processing resources. Thus, given these limitations, rendering dynamic content (e.g. terrain views or map views) on mobile devices can be challenging.
GIS applications may communicate with a server to retrieve data that is requested for display on the mobile device. For example, a GIS application may request data from a server to update a terrain view being displayed on the mobile device. However, once such a request is made and is being transmitted to the server, a user action may request an update to the terrain view before the initially requested data is returned by the server. Thus, the server may return data that is no longer relevant to a view that is being requested. Because the data returned by the server is no longer relevant to the view that is being requested, the mobile device may receive and process data that is no longer relevant to a current view, thereby wasting valuable and limited mobile device processing resources.